The seculars in the West simply do not understand religion. Because secular thinking people have omitted God from their lives, they cannot understand a religious perspective.
Political correctness is a symptom of secular, liberal thinking. But, it is only a symptom. PC thinking grows out of a mindset which does not recognize authority, which cannot be obedient to any higher Good.
So many times, I hear people say, "Oh, he is a good man, but...." The
but becomes a list, of either large or small of sins, many mortal, such as ambition, adultery, fornication, greed.
The use of terms such as "good, better, best" meant something in a society where the people held
objective norms of judgment based on Christian principles.
This Christian basis for judgment has been gone in America and in Europe for a long time, perhaps my entire life.
Language reveals beliefs. As I wrote the other day, ideas have consequences. So does language. Hitler knew this when he used terms to hide hideous hatred and subhuman systems of genocide.
Propaganda, first used by the Machiavellian Queen Elizabeth I, misuses language in order to brainwash, purposefully to change the minds and hearts of the people. Propaganda may be used in ordinary conversation, as well as by organizations and nation states.
Goodness rests in God alone. Only God is good. We become more like we are intended to be, sons and daughters of God, adopted by baptism, heirs to heaven, only when we cooperate with grace.
We, as practicing Catholics, need to stop using language in vague and distracting ways.
Who is good? Who is better? Who is best? What is good, better, best?
As you all know from my long perfection series, now close to or over 1,000 posts over the years, we are all called to be saints.
Being a saint means appropriating grace, which is hard work. To be a saint is to be the best we can be, not for the sake of earthly comfort, but in order to give glory to God and to spread the Good News of the Gospel.
I had a shock, (well, not really, as I suspected something), yesterday. I found out that the vast majority of Catholic men who go to Mass every Sunday in a community near where I now live belong to one or another of the common secret societies. This has been happening for generations. Some, most, belong to the Grangers, the Elks, the Masons. Yet, they use language of Christianity and call each other "good". Others call these men "good". They have ignored over 200 years of Church teaching on secret societies.
Almost all, if not all, these men belong to a group which undermines the teaching of the Catholic Church and follows the heresies of eirenism, indifferentism and modernism, all explained in the post added below.
I reposted the entire article, but here is the link.
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2012/01/cradle-of-modernist-heresies.html
Now I understand why this area suffers from several generations who did not receive proper catechesis or hard, solid truths from the pulpit in that area to which I refer. Now I know why there have been few is any vocations in this area.
Yet, these men claim they are "Catholic". Language becomes twisted.
What is a Catholic? What does it mean to be automatically excommunicated?
What does it mean to be obedient to the Church's teaching on secret societies?
What does it mean to be living in heresy and worse, worshipping the dark side?
Only when religious language really means something, only when people talk from their souls, hearts and renewed minds, can one trust language. The seculars have, like Hitler, ruined language. Those Catholics who have compromised are twisting language.
Good, better, best are words, concepts which only make sense when one is walking with God in the Catholic Church, being a member of the Church Militant, acting like an adopted son or daughter of God.
Pay attention how you speak. Your words reveal your soul and your true beliefs. Pray for those in your families who have no moral framework with which to judge language.
We do.
The Cradle of Modernist Heresies
In 1983, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, who was prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, now Pope Benedict XVI, issued a document
under the name of the Declaration on Masonic Associations. The link is on the name.
In that document, the long history of the condemnation of Freemasonry by
the Church, since 1738, was reiterated and clearly defined. The
original condemnation of Clement XII, In eminenti apostolatus specula was upheld.
Since that time, I have had many
Catholics, in the United States and in Europe claim that the Church had
removed the automatic excommunication on a Catholic who joined the
Masons. This is not and has never been so. One has to understand that
the Church's condemnation of Masonry is based not merely on the fact
that it is a secret organization, but that it upholds several Modernist
heresies. Firstly, Cardinal Ratizinger wrote that:
Therefore the
Church’s negative judgment in regard to Masonic association remains
unchanged since their principles have always been considered
irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership
in them remains forbidden. The faithful who enrol in Masonic
associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy
Communion.
He went on to state
that no bishop had any right to change this. It is interesting that the
SSPX press, Angelus Press, has one of the best books on the evils and
pitfalls of Masonry. One can find it here. However, I want to concentrate on a few of the Modernist heresies found in Freemasonry.
The first is indifferentism. This heresy proclaims that all religions
are the same and that religion has no place in the public life of a
nation or people.Mirari Vos On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism written in 1832 by Gregory XVI is a forgotten document of the Church.
Indifferentism
leads to a relativism about religion, stating that all are either the
same, or so subjective as to mean only what a person sincerely believes.
This pluralism leads to another aspect that because all religions are
relative and the same, these beliefs have no role in the public life,
cannot affect politics, or governmental decisions. Of course, as the
Catholic Church is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, this
heresy is condemned as contrary to both Revelation and Tradition.
Indifferentism leads to a denial of the supernatural, as if all beliefs
are equal or subjective, there is no hierarchy, no Revelation from God.
Also denied in this heresy would be dogma, for the same reasons. It is
interesting that in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907, itself peppered
with some Modernist heresies, that this statement from Newman is quoted
in the section on indifferentism:
No truth, however sacred, can stand against it (the Catholic Church) in the long run; and hence it is that in the Pagan world, when our Lord came, the last traces of the religious knowledge of former times were all but disappearing from those portions of the world in which the intellect had been active and had a career" (Apologia, chap. v).
The second heresy of many in Masonry is eirenism.This is what I call the forgotten heresy.
The condemnation of eirenism is found in Pope Pius XII's encyclical, Humani Generis. This great work condemns existentialism, historicism (Gramsci watch), immanentism and other isms. The point of eirenism is, in the words of the Pope: setting
aside the questions which divide men, they aim not only at joining
forces to repel the attacks of atheism, but also at reconciling things
opposed to one another in the field of dogma. And as in former times
some questioned whether the traditional apologetics That branch of the
science of theology which explains the reasons for the Church's
existence and doctrine of the Church did not constitute an obstacle
rather than a help to the winning of souls for Christ, so today some are
presumptuous enough to question seriously whether theology and
theological methods, such as with the approval of ecclesiastical
authority are found in our schools, should not only be perfected, but
also completely reformed, in order to promote the more efficacious
propagation throughout the world among men of every culture and
religious opinion.
This
heresy clearly seeks after a type of syncretism, a religion of unity,
wherein divisions vanish and people come together to worship some sort
of agreed upon god. I would venture to say that eirenism leads directly
to Worship of the State.
This
is the atmosphere of religion and philosophy in the United States at
this very moment. The State declares that there is no religious right to
conscience, thereby setting up its own standards for so-called moral or
ethical behavior. To use an example, abortion is ok because a Supreme
Court decision determined it was so, and because further legislation
supports it. The State has substituted itself for the Church in matters
of conscience.
Wake
up, American Catholics. So, the heresies sleeping in Masonry have
awakened and taken over the mind-set of the nation's leaders. Simple and
neat.
What
is happening and has happened in Catholic education, wherein schools
are rebelling against the Teaching Magisterium (look here in California today,
this minute) is a direct result of the concepts of eirenism. Schools
and other facilities play down differences for the sake of community
unity to the detriment of Catholic Teaching.
It
is too late to change this huge momentum, hidden in Masonry by choice,
and held in some minds by lethargy and laziness. To take the easiest way
out, to placate, to be politically correct is eirenism.
The greatest heresy in Masonry is immanentism, which destroys the
Revelation of God as Trinity, replacing Him with a vague, abstract
presence found in the world. Pope Pius X condemned this in Pascendi Dominici Gregis.
As Catholics, we do not have much
time to read all of these documents, but what is happening today in
America, with the attack on the Church from the present administration
concerning freedom of religion and freedom on conscience is an attack
prophesied by all the documents above. If Church leaders knew their own
teaching, they would have seen this coming, or even better, stopped
these idealistic heresies from fomenting in
the people in the pews. And, as laymen, we only have ourselves to blame
if we find ourselves marginalize, persecuted, imprisoned, martyred. See
my post below on the stages of persecution and the ideologies which
push these heresies. The one I have left for this posting is
Freemasonry, which seems to hold many of the Modernist heresies and is
able to produce these in the market place as goods.
As one can tell, I taught a history
of ideas, history of encyclicals, history of heresies. Nothing has
changed in 2012 which was not there in 1732 or earlier. Sadly, the
revisionist historians within the Catholic Church look like they have
won the day. I honestly feel that we are in the times of Arianism, the
greatest heresy which rocked and split the Church. However, the Church
prevailed, and will, as Christ promised until the end of time. But, the
Lord did not assure us it would be a large, powerful, or influential
Church. Perhaps the words of one of the Desert Fathers are applicable. I
think, but I am not sure, it was Abba Pambo.
"When asked by a young monk if they
were of the greatest generation because they saw and cast out devils,
and prayed, fasted, and converted and healed people, the Abba answered.
'No, we are not the greatest generation. We have obvious power. The
next generation will see Christ establish His Kingdom among the Nations,
and there will be unity for awhile. But, the greatest generation is the
one, which under great persecution, will survive. They are the greatest
and the last.'"
